Hyderabad, June 19, 2021: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has been making a concerted effort to get Telugu medium educational institutions in the state to switch to English as the primary mode of teaching. His government’s latest such endeavour came Tuesday, when it directed all government, private aided and unaided degree (graduation-level) colleges in the state to compulsorily adopt English as the medium of instruction from this academic session.
The decision comes about a year-and-a-half after the government ordered schools in the state to switch to English, though that November 2019 direction has been mired in legal trouble.
Not put off by the hassles, the government believes that its latest directive will enhance the students’ job prospects, especially at the global level. This, in effect, means that from the coming session, students seeking degree (graduation-level) courses will not have the option to study them in Telugu.
The Tuesday order notes that of the 2.62 lakh students who joined degree colleges in the 2020-21 academic session, 65,981 were from the Telugu medium background and opted for the same medium colleges according to the reports published in theprint.in.
“Our own statistics show that 60 to 70 per cent of Telugu medium students are themselves opting for English medium in the graduation level or College level; the rest of them are not doing so purely due to their inhibitions — be it fear of learning a new language or so,” Prof HemaChandra Reddy, Chairman, AP State Council of Higher Education, told ThePrint.
“All the PG and research programmes (barring language-based research topics) are in English, then how will the students cope if they study only in Telugu?” he added.
“We don’t want students to be limited just to the Telugu states for employment — we want them to go work outside, perhaps abroad. In fact, in Andhra, we don’t even have enough industries to accommodate our youth. We lost the capital Hyderabad to Telangana after bifurcation.”
Critics, including the opposition, however, question the move, on the grounds that migration to a new language at this age will not be easy, especially after years of training and conceptual learning in Telugu.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been alleging that the move is also an attempt by the Jagan government to wipe out Telugu culture.
“This English medium is being made mandatory in government schools and colleges. People from really backward, rural communities choose government institutions. How can they suddenly start learning English and will they be able to adapt easily? We are not against English medium but all we are saying is leave it to the student to pick the medium, give them an option. Don’t make it a compulsion,” the BJP’s state general secretary Vishnu Vardhan Reddy told ThePrint.
Responding earlier to such criticism, Jagan took digs at Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu and former chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, both of whom opposed his decision, asking them what medium of schools their children and grand-children study in.
